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Small Business Wages are Climbing Fast!

For the first time since the
inception of The PayScale Index, small business wages are growing faster than
their medium and large-sized business counterparts. This little but important
fact has many sitting up and taking notice. Business Insider published an
article about this fact noting that, “historically
large companies experienced larger pay increases, however over the last two
quarters this has switched.”

Small
business highlights from The PayScale Index

Wages in
Q3 2012 grew by 1.5 percent for small companies compared to only 1.1 percent
for large companies.

This
strong quarterly growth pushed small companies to the top for annual wage
growth (3.7 percent vs. 2.4 percent for medium companies and 2.9 percent for
large companies).

However,
even with this strong performance, wage growth since 2006 for small companies
still lags behind large companies, but it is catching up with medium companies.

Cruising
at the Speed of Business

According to Katie Bardaro, PayScale’s lead
economist, this is most likely a sign of change in the economy since small
companies tend to show trends faster. “Small companies don’t have a corporate
HR structure that people have to go through for hiring, so they’re a lot faster
moving. So if they’re having wage increases that’s an encouraging sign that
they’ll hopefully spread out to the larger and medium sized companies as well,”
Bardaro said.
Don’t Risk Losing Key Talent

Hopefully this revelation from The PayScale Index has our small
business friends paying attention because retaining talented employees has just
gotten a bit more challenging. Simply having free chips and soda in your company
kitchen and a ping-pong table won’t be enough to cut it now. It’s going to be
crucial to get pay right in order to get and keep key people.

It’s almost more important to get salaries right if you're on the smaller end of the business scale. If talent leaves, your business will take a big hit. We’re talking
missed deliverables, unmet deadlines, lost sales, etc. In a smaller company
each talented employee is incrementally more valuable. You have to compete for
talent with the big guys, and that often means paying wages that are comparable
to what they’re offering.